Journal II
by miss skinny love
Summary: Hermione's logical. Logic dictates that it's beneficial to release her emotions in a non-destructive manner ... like through a journal.
1. entry twenty-one

**_entry twenty-one_**

Hermione Granger. Who am I? An existential crisis, so it seems. An inevitable occurrence. I once read that it was one of the requirements of development. Society says, "Young one, you are indeed but young." So kindly, and considerately, it grants a moratorium.

It says: Hermione Granger, you are but young. You have years yet.

Then why does it not feel like it? Why does it feel like I'm old? I'm so clever – or so they tell me – but I can't answer this simple question. Time is slipping past. I'm losing it.

It's more precious than water, and I feel as if I'm losing it. As I write this, I'm tired. I can't quite think straight. My neck hurts because I've sat too long at a desk.

I'm wracking my mind. Really.

Voldemort is dead. Harry defeated him, and then he and Ron joined the Aurors, at a mere nineteen years, after some intensive training. Who would've thought – it 'only' took the defeat of a Dark Lord to get them to focus on their studies. In hindsight, maybe they were so desperate to live that any exertion of effort not deemed impossibly important was tossed to the wayside. This is, of course, a sort of exaggeration. Doubtless laziness is simply that, even for Weasley Kings and Boy-Who-Liveds.

And I? I feel as if I'm that unimportant exertion of effort, thrown to the wayside. My parents are still on another continent, thinking they have no daughter, because I can't face them, not with all the magic in the world at my disposal.

Imagine that.

I'm scared.

I want … I want to go back to the past, to when I had large front teeth and overly frizzy hair.

The first lines of this passage were "Hermione Granger". That's me. But it doesn't feel like it, not with my hair so sleek and my teeth so pretty. Not with _mudblood_ carved into my arm.

Words have power, yes? It's why I worshipped books for so long. And I've read this word more than any other word I've ever read, until I can picture it down to the exact contours of the scar, to the way the surrounding skin is so pale in comparison. I know it so well that I could draw a replica impressive enough to make the best con artist smile. I keep picturing Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger is ten years old, and she has no scars. Her hair is a horrid mess, and her teeth an affair in which dentists giggle hysterically at over champagne flutes. Hermione Granger never met Harry Potter, or Ronald Weasley, or Dumbledore. She never punched a boy named Draco Malfoy. She never kissed a famous wizard, or mocked a girl for her beliefs, or rode on the back of a dragon.

Hermione Granger … is a girl. She likes green, because green is the color of nature. She would never do crazy things like hunting down slivers of a soul so warped by madness that its name isn't whispered by even the angriest people.

And yet – I am Hermione Granger, and I can't compute that this is me, writing in a journal, crying, because my friends are hunting Dark wizards and I'm hunting myself. They call it 'cognitive dissonance'. One thought clashing with another. One Hermione battling the other in a war of wills.

I'm studying Wizarding Law, because I want to help house-elves like Dobby, who died too soon and whose lives are incomparably unfair. I've learned that what's moral, what's legal, and what's just are apparently enemies. I can't fight for a cause. I can't say _this is wrong._ No-one listens to that.

So I say as a remedy, "restitutio in integrum" for the unassisted minor. I use these laws, and restore status quo ante, and that's all it is. The letter of the law. And Dark wizards roam free and Ministry officials bribe each other and my parents go on thinking they've never had a child.

Alright. So I tell myself: let's fix this. Let's use this remedy. Let's go overseas, and raise a wand against my parents, and force myself back into their lives. Let them rail against me; let them cry; let them slap me for my protective cruelty. But the truth is that they won't do that.

My mother will sink to her knees, and raise a trembling hand to her mouth. "How could I forget you?" she'll mouth. And my dad will stare at me in awe. I used magic against them, and warped their minds, and placed them thousands of yards away. I did this. Their daughter.

I just want to know who I am. Am I the scar on my arm – _mudblood –_ or the one in my mind?

I can't keep my eyes open. Maybe when I wake up I'll know. I doubt it.


	2. entry twenty-two to twenty-seven

**_entry twenty-two_**

I saw George Weasley today when I visited the Burrow. I deeply regret that visit. He looked defeated whenever someone wasn't looking at him. I have to admit – it was almost fascinating, watching his expression warp like that.

Strange how he didn't bother smiling when I looked at him.

I have to wonder if it's because I look defeated too.

 ** _entry twenty-three_**

I'm sorry. The previous entry was so short because I didn't want to finish writing the truth.

The truth is that Ginny told me to stop being so selfish. In her exact words, "I lost my brother. Who did you lose?"

Who did I lose?

I stood there and said nothing. She grew angrier. But that's how Ginny is. Always hot-tempered, with a curse on her lips and fire in her eyes.

She said she wanted the old Hermione back.

I said that's whom I've lost. I've lost Hermione. I've lost myself.

I've never seen her speechless before.

I've never felt so bitter before.

 ** _entry twenty-four_**

I'm top of my Wizarding Law class.

Ron keeps moaning, "Of course you are!", as if he thinks the idea of me failing anything is impossible. I can't agree with that. I feel as if I've failed a lot of things.

He wouldn't stop enthusing about his Auror career. I bit my tongue so I wouldn't tell him that he'd only been accepted into the Accelerated Auror Program because of his association with Harry. Hermione wouldn't say such a mean thing. Would she?

 ** _entry twenty-five_**

I was told today by one of my Professors that I need to learn to separate my own morals from the law. I told her that if the law had morals I wouldn't need to involve my own. She was not impressed. When I complained to Harry, he was on her side. He kept bringing up S.P.E.W and how I'd made house-elves cry.

They only cried because they'd never known freedom. The unknown is always terrifying. Look at me. I'm terrified too.

 ** _entry twenty-six_**

I'm supposed to be working right now. I can feel the clock ticking. It's winding down. Time is running out. Still. I'm sitting here, blocking out the noises – blocking out Chang and her blabbering – trying to _think._

I just need … I need …

I don't know what I need. That's it. I don't know what I need. Am I always going to be sitting here, waiting for things to make sense? I'm so fucking tired of thinking.  
The great Granger, tired of thinking. Supposedly the only thing I'm good at.

Can't even write anymore. I just want to stay still. Just listen, maybe, and breathe, and wait.

 ** _entry twenty-seven_**

I don't know what to write. Do I write about my studies, or how I can't find things to do that I love outside of academics? Do I write about how the nights that I don't spend with friends are lonely, because my parents are in Australia, and I'm too afraid to release them from their spell? Do I admit that I'm lonely even when I'm _with_ my friends? Or how Hogwarts still has spell burns in some parts of it, and I keep hunting them down and cleaning and undoing and healing the spell residue away, as if somehow that will undo the losses we faced?

Molly keeps telling me to be patient, to have faith and hope. To be brave. Brave? But the Sorting Hat wanted Ravenclaw. My mum always did say yellow suited me better than red. And then I feel annoyed with myself, because I know bravery is not the absence of fear, but the persistence through it. I'm brave. One has to be brave to be Harry's friend. (I don't feel brave. Only a coward would rather have their family forget them even after the danger had passed, just because they're afraid of the repercussions.)

Anne Frank once said that paper is more patient than man. But I have found that such patience is still subject to my own impatience. I have the pen. I am the pen.

And I keep listening to sad songs. Keep listening to nostalgia and the old taste of childhood and possibility and the strange awareness of time. I listen and I feel as if I'm gathering power for a spell, but I never cast the spell and the power lulls back to sleep, dissatisfied and sad with a faint edge of anger.

 _"_ _Take me back to when_ – _"_ is what that song says. I sing along – _take me back._

Just like Ginny, I want the old Hermione back. But she's dead, too, just like all those losses. Cleaning up the spell residue won't change that.

The problem is … I don't know if the new Hermione is even alive. She writes, and works, and studies, and eats, and mingles … she's dead, I think.  
Everything is just fucking dead.


End file.
